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40 MUSIC OF THE EASTERN CHURCHES
The Byzantine theorists give indications of the meaning of these addi
tional signs, but fully satisfactory explanations are given only for
those occurring in manuscripts from the twelfth to the fourteenth
centuries. They are rendered in our transcriptions as follows:
Bareia
A
J^
n
Diple J Kratema J
Tzakisma Ji Parakletike J^ Seisma J
Gorgon = accel. Argon = rit, Apoderma ^
Xeron Klasma = mezzo stacc. Kylisma J^
In order to mark the interval of the ascending fourth, sixth, seventh,
and the octave, two or three signs were combined and written one
above the other, and a similar method was used to indicate the
descending fourth. In some combinations, however, the signs are set
one after the other. This happens when &pnewna (an ascending third
or fifth) is combined with a soma. In this setting, i.e. soma followed
bypneuma, the soma becomes 'soundless' (ctycwov). It loses its interval
value but gives its dynamic nuance to the pneuma. This is the reason
why in Byzantine notation relatively few signs are needed to give a
great variety to the intervals.
The first musicologists who tried to decipher Byzantine musical
notation were not aware of the meaning of avov. Some of them,
for example Riemann, treated the 'soundless' soma as a grace-note.
Others ignored it and therefore failed to decipher the notation prop
erly. Fleischer came nearest to the solution of the problem when he
published and commented on the most important theoretical treatise
on Byzantine musical notation, the Papadike, in his Neumen-Studien,
III (Berlin, 1904), but he failed to draw the right conclusions from his
discovery and gave only skeletons of the melodies in his transcrip
tions, completely neglecting their rhythmical shape.
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It was the dis-
covery that the Byzantine w